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Kim Basinger started her big screen career in a series of roles as blonde arm candy, but eventually acted her way out of that status with an Academy and Golden Globe Award-winning performance in Curtis Hanson's neo-noir crime drama, "L.A. Confidential" (1997). It was a cruel twist of fate that the leggy bombshell was born shy and panic-stricken over being the center of attention, but she managed to build a steady career out of fighting her fears; first as a model and then as an actress. While often cast for her ethereal beauty, the root of Basinger's real gift was the ever-present internal struggle, which imbued even her most extroverted characters with a gentle vulnerability. Basinger weathered a storm of unflattering publicity surrounding her marriage and acrimonious divorce from loose cannon Alec Baldwin, but settled into a respectable middle-aged film career that offered well-crafted characterizations of increasingly interesting and complex women.Kimila Ann Basinger was born Dec. 8, 1953, and raised in Athens, GA. Painfully shy from the outset, the Southern belle reportedly fainted whenever she had to speak in front of the class. That fear, however, was offset by a genetic predisposition towards performing, as she was the daughter of a big band musician father and a mother who had been a silver screen swimmer alongside movie star, Esther Williams, in those classic MGM Technicolor spectacles. Young Basinger studied dance to overcome her shyness, and by the time she was a teenager, she was entering local beauty pageants, which eventually led to a slot in the National Junior Miss Pageant and an offer to model with the acclaimed Ford Agency in New York City. Basinger harbored hopes of being a singer or an actress, but accepted the offer and headed to New York with hopes that modeling might help her get her foot in other doors. Over the next five years, she found steady and lucrative work as a cover girl and in hundreds of ads, including a stint as the face (and hair) of Breck shampoo. She studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse during this time, and in 1976, finally decided to focus on acting with a move to Los Angeles. Due in large part to her buxom body and unique look, Basinger's acting career began right away, with guest appearances on shows like "Starsky & Hutch" (ABC, 1975-79) and "Charlie's Angels" (ABC, 1976-1981). She landed a regular series TV role as a cop in the short-lived ABC series "Dog and Cat" in 1977, and a title role in the TV movie "Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold" (NBC, 1978) which helped establish her image as a model-turned-actress. The following year, she was cast as a prostitute - in an Oscar-winning role originated on the big screen by Donna Reed - in the 1979 miniseries remake of "From Here to Eternity" (NBC) and its short-lived series spin-off the following year. Despite additional roles in TV-movies, Basinger did not seem to click on the small screen, but her big screen debut was promising, with the actress's Southern accent helping her win the role of the forlorn girlfriend of cowboy Jan-Michael Vincent in the well-received "Hard Country" (1981). In another outdoorsy film, "The Mother Lode" (1982), she co-starred with director and movie legend, Charlton Heston. Her career gained momentum in 1983 after she appeared as Bond Girl, Domino Petachi, in Sean Connery's return to OO7 form in "Never Say Never Again" (1983). It did not hurt that she promoted the film with a nude layout in Playboy magazine, further raising her profile.After co-starring with Burt Reynolds in Blake Edwards' remake of "The Man Who Loved Women" (1983), Basinger upped the ante with a supporting role as the femme fatale who romances Robert Redford in "The Natural" (1984), earning the actress a Golden Globe nomination. In the first of several collaborations with director Robert Altman, she played Sam Shepard's half-sister in an adaptation of the playwright's Off-Broadway hit "Fool for Love" (1985). She acquitted herself well